Can We Effectively Combine IoT and Repair?

           Imagine it’s Tuesday morning.  You get an email saying that your car has been recalled for an onboard computer problem.  You don’t have the time to take the car into the dealership, as you have a full day of work ahead of you.  You are probably pretty frustrated that you will have to take time out of your busy schedule to get your car fixed.  Now imagine the if the same situation happened, but this time, you got a second email from the vehicle manufacturer saying that the issue will be fixed overnight, on the fly, via Wi-Fi.  Big difference.  This repair is all made possible by IoT.

            Alex Brisbourne explains in his article Tesla’s Over-the-Air Fix: Best Example Yet of the Internet of Things? that this is exactly what Tesla did to fix a charging plug malfunction.  His logical piece got me excited about what the future of repair and IoT holds and proposed an answer to the of differentiating between making and fixing - why not have both?  As I presented in earlier posts, repair and making/IoT usually occupy very different spheres of sustainable design.  But both ultimately present opportunities to integrate more renewability and reusability into our systems and markets.  So, can IoT and work together in unity to promote sustainable design? 

            Tesla seems to think so.  Their “over the air” fix gives us a glimpse into the power of integrating IoT and repair.  They not only designed their system to be connected to IoT’s sea of information and potential but to make their cars easy to fix.  They cut out the middleman with their use of IoT but maintained the sustainability of saving resources like users’ time and workers’ wages.

            Conversely, as peachy of a picture Tesla paints, there are clear examples where IoT and design don’t mix.  Imagine if cell phone manufacturers were able to make the same sort of repairs over wireless connections.  The repair culture of Dhaka examined in the previous post would go down the tubes.  In some places, trying to combine IoT and design would hurt some people just as much as it would help others.   

            The evolution of technology presents an interesting paradox as discussed by Donald Norman in The Design of Everyday Things. As technology improves, “it offers the potential to make life easier and more enjoyable…” (Norman 32).  At the same time, new technology creates more complexity and frustration.  This duality appears in how integrating IoT and repair would hurt Bangladeshi repairers.  New IoT technology would make phone repair easier, but if the system were to break, it would be much harder for Bangladesh’s repairers to fix.

            For these reasons, I believe a hybrid of IoT and repair will best benefit the world.  Sure high-tech features such as IoT make our lives easier, but what about the electronics repair workers in Bangladesh?  Repair and IoT both provide avenues for sustainable progress, but an investment only one or the other would overlook potential value in different markets.

Works Cited

Elmansy, Rafiq. "Principles Of Sustainable Design". Designorate. N.p., 2014. Web. 14 Oct. 2016.

          Norman, Donald A. "Chapter 1: The Psychopathology of Everyday Things." The Design of                            Everyday Things. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2013. N. pag. Print.